White to move and mate in two #753 - Under the Affluence

by dkosdan

Community

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Thursday, Dec. 04, 2025 Thursday, Dec. 04, 2025 at 3:00:05pm PST

White to move and mate in two. The chess puzzle is published on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is customary for advanced players to wait till midnight ET before posting the full solution. Before then, they provide some stats about the solution (e.g., the number of distinct checkmate moves), help guide others, and sometimes post hints. But, there are no hard-and-fast rules, feel free to post comments as you please.

Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America

… Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, recently admonished the commoners in his own city that they should be “offering their humble and hearty thanks” to the super-rich, because, as he put it:
These are the people who put bread on the tables of families who—if the rich didn’t invest in supercars and employ eau de cologne-dabbers—might otherwise find themselves without a breadwinner.²⁴⁹
For clarification, an “eau de cologne-dabber” is someone who literally places perfumed water upon the temples of the rich, and is paid to do this because, naturally, the rich cannot put on their own perfume, the working class should be grateful, apparently, that the rich in London are so lazy; otherwise, how might the masses even manage to feed themselves? …

—Tim Wise, Under the Affluence

Online board

Hint

Solution

Solution (spoiler) instructions:
In the link above, slide the NNUE (x) ) button to on. Remember to slide it to off before leaving the site, unless you want to spoil future puzzles.

Please see both messy and cleaned up solutions that emerge in the comments.